Successful treatment of mediastinitis in a young child by omental translocation following extracardiac Fontan graft placement.

Overview

Mediastinitis after a midline sternotomy can become a serious complication, especially after implantation of prosthetic vascular grafts. We present a case of a three-year-old boy with hypoplastic left heart syndrome who developed mediastinitis following his third-stage palliation (Fontan operation). Rather than following the "traditional" surgical therapy of graft explantation, debridement, and replacement, we chose to preserve the graft and protect it by omental translocation. The relative merits of this therapeutic approach, which is rarely utilized and underappreciated in children, are outlined and discussed.